The Rise of Kai Cenat

Bronx-born Kai Cenat is currently just twenty-one years of age with a huge belt of achievements in his career. Cenat grew up with three siblings and from a young age wanted to be a comedian, posting short-film content on Facebook and Instagram while in high school. While at college, Kai went on to drop out of Business Administration as he said he struggled to keep up with work and content creation.

His YouTube career started in early 2018, putting together prank videos alongside challenges, going on to join the YouTube group AMP, standing for Any Means Possible after being found by Fanum, regularly appearing on their channel from then forward. In 2021, Kai started to stream on Twitch, filming gaming and reaction content.

In 2022, Kai was nominated for ‘Streamer of the Year’ at the YouTube Streamy awards. As of December 2022, Cenat was confirmed to be the ‘Streamer of the Year’ as he was presented with the award as well as being one of the fastest-growing Twitch channels, as the streamer has amassed over three million followers since 2021. His acceptance speech was really clean-hearted as it read

“This is crazy. I feel like I’m at the Grammys right now, man. Oh my. This is crazy. I want to thank my family, and my friends, who on a day-to-day basis, push me to be the best that I can be. Also, AMP agent Duke, Phantom, Chris, and Davis. I love y’all. Wish y’all was here. Last but not least, the mafia. Y’all went crazy. My supporters, I love y’all to death. Streamer of the Year is crazy, man. I appreciate y’all. Thank you.”

Cenat won his award alongside some of the best creators right now, for example, Mr. Beast, IShowSpeed, Ryan Trahan, and Ludwig. ‘Just Chatting’ winner xQc states that Kai Cenat should have won instead as in his acceptance speech he said “I’m going to be honest with you guys, Kai Cenat should have won this. He’s been rolling so hard. Can we get some big shout out to Kai Cenat”, demanding applause.

In April 2021, streamer Ludwig set the bar very high during his subathon. That was until Kai Cenat came for his crown, however, during the same month of 2021, Kai only averaged five thousand viewers. This number has now risen to over fifty thousand, with his own subathon going for the record. A thirty-day constant stream for twenty-four hours a day, consisting of chatting, gaming, and a whole lot of guests, also sleeping on camera. A lot of the thirty-day stream took place in February, Kai took the opportunity to commemorate Black History Month, becoming the first African-American streamer to reach 200,000 subscribers on Twitch. Also collecting a lot of different celebrities to make the stream more entertaining, for example, KSI, and Mr. Beast.

Over the course of the subathon, more than six million people tuned in to help Kai reach his goal with nearly five million of those being ‘Unique Authorised Viewers’, gaining a total of 928,140 followers. Streaming a total of thirty-seven games and a whole 78% of ‘Just Chatting’. His stream went crazy when it came to talking to Kai as he received nineteen million messages across thirty days.

Kai had always been able to freestyle and rap, it was amazing to see that in May 2022, Cenat released a music video on his main channel, featuring NLE Choppa, which helped the success of the video. In the first two hours of the video being released, the video already hit a million views, which is more than most rappers. The video now sits comfortably on eleven million views after ten months. As expected, the comments went crazy, for example, “He could do this again and again with different rappers and it still wouldn’t get old”, “this song will forever be legendary”, and “We really getting out the hood with this one”.